An iconic and influential industrial furniture designer, founding partner of the acclaimed Total Design Bureau, member of the Amsterdamse Kunstraad, Raad voor Industriële Vormgeving and the International Design Consortium, visiting lecturer, faculty member, international design juror and innovative Dutch design icon, Friso Kramer has informed and popularized the modernist design aesthetic of the Netherlands since the mid 20th century.

Perhaps the most notable and classically recognized design is Friso Kramer's 1953 molded plywood and steel 'Revolt' chair. The Revolt Chair became a popular icon of the emerging industrial modernist Dutch style and continues to be a highly sought after design classic. A retrospective of Friso's work was held at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam in 1977 & 1978, and was followed by an exhibition at the Boymans van Beuningen Museum in Rotterdam in 1991. This last exhibition also saw the publication of the book, "Friso Kramer Industriële Vormgeving".

Michael Voltaggio's new restaurant, Ink just opened up in Los Angeles and features a large group of our vintage Friso Kramer Revolt chairs in the dining area.

9/13/11

GIO PONTI (1891-1979) was a poet, painter, industrial designer, architect and founding editor of Domus magazine. Through his designs and his work at Domus, he was the godfather of Italy's post-war design renaissance.

"Love architecture, be it ancient or modern. Love it for its fantastic, adventurous and solemn creations; for its inventions; for the abstract, allusive and figurative forms that enchant our spirit and enrapture our thoughts. Love architecture, the stage and support of our lives." - Gio Ponti

“Architecture is made to be looked at. Facades are the wall of the street, and a city is made of streets; the facades are the visible part of the city, they are all of the city that appears.” -Gio Ponti

A passionate propagandist for design excellence, Ponti encourage every person to use good design as a means of enjoying a colorful and sensual life.

Hugely prolific and touching many aspects of design during his lifetime, his daughter, Lisa Licitra Ponti, summarised his work: "Sixty years of work, buildings in thirteen countries, lectures in twenty-four, twenty-five years of teaching, fifty years of editing, articles in every one of the five hundred and sixty issues of his magazines, two thousand five hundred letters dictated, two thousand letters drawn, designs for a hundred and twenty enterprises, one thousand architectural sketches."

4/20/11

Seemingly being generally out of fashion after the boom of the 1960's and 1970's, West German pottery has been gaining massive popularity and a dedicated collector base that appreciates its style and eccentric aesthetic. Some of these ceramic pieces are hand-thrown while others are mass-produced stock shapes. Even stock shapes are made unique by the rough textures and the huge range of individual glazes. Size and shape can a petite three inches to well over a few feet tall for the larger floor vases.

Factories that produced these ceramic pieces include Baykeramik, Carstens, Dumler & Breiden, Jopeko, Roth, Ruscha, and Scheurich. Many are only marked with a serial number and often with German or W. Germany on the bottom making it difficult to determine the original designer or manufacturer. Fat Lava, a nickname for this eclectic pieces, references the thick pumice and lava-like glazing. Funnily, because of translation errors on the internet "thick pumice" became "fat lava".

4/12/11

Any office, be it home or work, needs a hardworking and versatile desk as its central hub of activity. Keep it unique with a vintage desk designed in the midst of the mid century office revolution. Steelcase, Danish or American made - we have a number of desks available that are as hardworking as you are.

A little touch of retro office is always exciting - just like that mid day cocktail.